Watch the Science Cop Take on Chris Christie’s Vaccine Talk

Christie isn't a doctor, so why is he dishing out advice on vaccines?

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Chris Christie called for “balance” this week between public health and parents’ right to choose when it comes to vaccinating their children, going against the prevailing science.

Christie’s office was quick to walk back his comments and say “with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated.” But TIME’s Science Cop Jeffrey Kluger explains why statements like this, and the ongoing decision by many to forego vaccinations, are harming America’s children.

The climate denier in charge of the Senate Climate Committee

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You don’t have to be a general to be head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, but if you don’t at least believe in the existence of a military, we’ve got a problem on our hands.

The country is about to face something similar in January, when the GOP takes control of the U.S. Senate and Oklahoma’s James Inhofe — Congress’s most vocal global warming denier — becomes chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe, who has called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” not only sniffs at what the overwhelming majority of climatologists know to be true, he actually tries to go toe to toe with them on the science. And that’s where he exposes how little he knows — and how wrong he is. The Science Cop explains.

Watch a Science Cop Take on the Ebola Fear Mongers

You'd be crazy not to be afraid of Ebola—but it's equally crazy to be too afraid.

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Yes, Ebola has close to a 50% death rate; and yes that death is a very ugly, very bloody one. But the first appearance of a case in the United States does not mean we’re headed for an epidemic anything like the one that is causing so much suffering in West Africa.

The disease is not easy to catch and incubates for a relatively short time—which means that no one spends months or years as a symptom-free carrier. And proper isolation facilities in modern hospitals mean that if a person does fall ill here, the virus can be contained. But none of that is what you’ll hear from the fear mongers, who warn that a plague is among us and we must seal our borders to save ourselves from doom.

This New Method of Farming Could Change Where Our Food Comes From

"It could be that the best strawberries in the world come from Detroit"

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Caleb Harper, founder of the CITYFarm Research Project, and his team at MIT’s Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass. appear to have found a way to grow food four times faster than it does in nature, using a new farming method called “Aeroponics.”

Unlike regular hydroponics, a growing method that uses water instead of soil, the plants at CITYFarm do not sit in still water, but rather have their roots suspended in a “fog chamber” which sprays a nutrient-rich mist.

The CITYFarmers take great care to monitor each aspect of the plants’ growth, to see which conditions work the best, including a technique of limiting light to red and blue.

“This is the spectrum of light that the plants need to grow extra plant material,” Harper explains–and the rest of the spectrum besides red and blue only serves to provide heat.

Harper believes that Aeoroponics not only grows fuller, more developed plants, but could be a solution to local farmers looking to provide sustenance to booming city populations.

“We all know the phrase, ‘the best X comes from X'”, he explains, instead proposing that “the best X comes from the environment that created it.”

“There is a new way to think of using fabrication space, especially if you look at a city like Detroit.”

By building a similar set up, which requires no soil or great tracts of land, “it could be that the best strawberries in the world come from Detroit.”

Watch a Science Cop Take on the Anti-Vaccine Movement

"Again, and always, they're wrong."

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Nothing gets the anti-vaccine fringe going quite so much as believing they’ve found a scandal—some bit of gotcha’ proof that the global medical establishment really, truly is covering up a terrible secret about the dangers of vaccines.

Recently, this always-vocal but rarely-rational crowd announced that they had what they were looking for, with the discovery that a comparatively old study had excluded some data suggesting that African-American children who had been vaccinated were slightly likelier than other kids to have developed autism.

But again—and always—the anti-vaxxers were wrong, misunderstanding the science, misrepresenting the findings, and recruiting the worst possible person imaginable to argue their wrong-headed case.

See Who Really Runs the U.S. Cigarette Game

A look at the players in the growing US tobacco market—the biggest may surprise you

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When CVS Caremark announced it was ending sales of cigarettes and tobacco products in stores, it was viewed as another step in the drive to get Americans healthy.

But despite CVS leaving the tobacco market, the number of stores selling tobacco products nationwide has actually increased. Twenty-eight attorneys general across the country have already asked major pharmacies to stop selling tobacco alongside medicine, a request that has so far been rebuffed.

About 86% of the sales of cigarettes nationwide come from bodegas, delis and convenience stores. And the nation’s largest distributor has a new owner in one of America’s wealthiest citizens. See the video above for more.

Watch the 100-Year History of Tear Gas in 2 Minutes

Banned in warfare, but used for crowd control at home.

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Tear gas, a noxious agent that causes tearing, vomiting and pain, was first used in combat by the French military during World War One 100 years ago. It was soon co-opted by the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service for use as a crowd control agent.

After being initially introduced as a replacement for poison gas after that substance was banned from battlefields, tear gas was soon being used used to quell large crowds in the 1920’s and 1930’s that gathered in the midst of food scarcity and economic uncertainty.

Its use continued throughout the 1960s, being used to corral anti-war protestors, most notably at the University of California, Berkeley. Despite now being banned from wartime use, tear gas is still in use for domestic crowd control, most recently seen during recent protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

Watch a Science Cop Take on Donald Trump

TIME's Jeffrey Kluger takes on The Donald for crimes against science

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The Ebola outbreak that is causing such fear and suffering in Africa is a very real and very deadly thing. But the fact is that the nature of the Ebola virus is such that it stands a very low chance of ever causing a pandemic like AIDS or H1N1. That hasn’t stopped America’s great foghorn—Donald Trump—and others like him from spreading all kinds of misinformation about the disease, warning people that patients should not be brought to the U.S. and that flights from West Africa should be stopped, otherwise we face an American epidemic.

But Trump and his ilk are committing a science crime—the crime of misinformation. Here’s the truth, from TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger.

Are You Man Enough? The Truth About Low Testosterone

Low-T drugs marketed to help men get their mojo back are having a moment, but are they safe?

With the market for low-testosterone, or “Low-T,” therapy projected to reach $5 billion by 2017, many new centers have sprung up across the country offering a spectacular catch-all treatment.

TIME spoke to experts in the field and visited the Ageless Men’s Health testosterone clinic to get the inside story on a treatment that promises to “boost your strength training, sex drive and performance to the levels you’ve been wanting.”